In the coming days... Famous last words, no doubt. My absense from writing about my projects here is due to having acquired a five month Sr ColdFusion Developer contract and getting back into the swing of that interesting language stack as well as taking some time to be off-grid camping last week.

I drove an hour and a half southward to the company's office for these first three days, today being the first, in order to get set up and acquainted with the people and the tasks at hand. After my stay down here I'll be working remotely for the duration of the contract. It's fairly enjoyable being in a new place and camping a hotel room for a few nights even if it's a departure from the distinctly familiar.

I've been considering (as I often do) what technologies I'd like to use to start getting back into video game programming. While I do like to have side projects that tie into my career development, I also have to make room for purely academic or interest-based pursuits; moreover, I just need to get things done. That being the case, I'm going to take the path of most resistance (because who doesn't love an utter struggle in their free time?) and learn some straight C with SDL for my graphics. As long as I can do linear interpolation, that's about the most advanced of mathematics that I need for character movement in an RPG style 2D game engine from scratch. I know that they say not to reinvent the wheel and to build games, not engines, but I'm most curious about how all of the pieces should interact and how to architect a complex program with so many moving parts.

The advantage of learning C, though not directly related to any of my future career options as far as I can be aware in the current, is that it can lead to a lower level understanding and possibly into the hardware realm which interests me very much from a strictly extracurricular standpoint. So, though it may be a departure from the cutting edge object oriented convenience-laden languages (C#, sorta C++..., etc.) it may ultimately be an gratifying endeavor.